You’ve been there, you have a killer new idea for the web and can’t wait to start iterating. Naturally you jump in head first and start coding,

"rails new my_killer_app"

You plan to add mobile apps as well but that will come later, you need to get your site up ASAP.

But can you afford to put off your mobile strategy? With the sales of smartphones and tablets now officially eclipsing the sales of PCs, the desktop browser is slowly moving away from being the central part of a service. Development teams need to step back and refocus. A new project should not begin in the browser, it needs to start out as a platform.

These days, if you are building a web based service then you are also going to be building a iPhone, Android, or mobile web site to complement it. If your mobile apps require a user login then you need to provide an authentication method on the server side that can be called via a secure REST interface.

As software developers we often get too caught up with trying to figure things out ourselves. Nothing is more satisfying than tackling a problem and getting into a zone until we eventually come up with a solution. What we often take for granted is how much we actually do rely on others while we build our next great thing. Just think about it, how many times a day do you google for code samples, tutorials, or the cause of an exception? You may not have realized it yet, but as software developers you are part of a huge online community.